Chatbots & Live Chat | A Sprint to Sublime Customer Service

The ambiguous nature
of technological trends and dynamic customer preferences have made it quite
tough for businesses to yield a prolific performance. Customer support has been
a paramount weapon when it comes to factors that make a business successful.
That’s why a good chunk of every organization’s investment contributes to the
customer support division each year.

From the time when
customers started getting assistance on the telephone to the present time when AI-backed
chatbots are clearing the doubts of customers, a massive paradigm shift has occurred.
In the sector where human interactions mattered, machine learning languages are
creating a firm presence of their own.

So what if the chatbots are not able to understand deep human emotions, brands are content with the ability of these AI-based apps to provide uninterrupted and fair customer service standards without any human intervention. The race to get the best customer support has started already. Facebook acquired the AI-based startup Ozlo in the year 2017, while Google also bought Onward, another AI-based company in 2018 with a vision to provide a smooth experience to the customers.

While the experts predict the global chatbot market to touch the $1.34 billion mark by 2024, a lot of doubts still float in the customer service market. Like, are chatbots really better in offering customer service than live chat? Can the human touch be swamped by the super competencies of technology? Let’s talk about these uncertainties and explore the scope of AI in customer service.

Live Chat: Pondering the human touch

Remember the movie Terminator,
where machines were on the rise and AI was so powerful that it was eager to weed
out humanity from the face of the earth? That Hollywood flick in the early 90s seemed
like a splendid fantasy. Today, machines are actually replacing humans in
different aspects of life. For instance, the customer service.

Chatbots have become an
inevitable reality for customer support. Whether you like it or not, you are
most likely interacting with a chatbot when you are reaching out to a business
on the web. While some of the businesses still prefer live chat agents to
assist the customers, chatbots are eventually clearing up the queues.

Live chat is considered
as the most influential and effective way to satiate the needs of customers. Why?
Because, we, as
humans, are known to supersede the machines in one quality; emotional
intelligence. Even though AI is able to interpret human responses and mimic suitable
replies, it is still not able to comprehend human emotions that are involved in
the communication. The human proficiency in reading tone, language, and emotion
in speech has still not beenacquired
by the chatbots. From the customers’ point of view too, it’s quite frustrating
to deal with the bots who only provide limited options bound in a loop.

Even though chatbots are
getting implemented in amajority of corporations, most of the
bots still redirect the sophisticated queries to human agents. Doesn’t matter
how vastly glorified the growth forecast of chatbots is, the reality is that the
replacement of a human’s emotional intelligence is still far away.

Chatbots: The Next-Gen Avenue

No company ever wants
to compromise on the quality of customer service. The benefits of live chat are
many but human limitation is perpetually pushing organizations of all sizes to
choose chatbots.

Before we dig deeper into this topic, let’s first have a subtle comprehension of what chatbots are. A chatbot is a computer program bolstered by artificial intelligence that enables you to communicate with customers through a chat interface. These chatbots are known to run on pre-programmed rules.

The most fascinating
factor is that these chatbots don’t require any human intervention to resolve
customer queries, which is a major game changer for businesses. Also, a chatbot
is never going to get tired, frustrated or stressed, factors that hamper the performance
and efficiency. In addition, the requirement to offer 24*7 customer service also
favors the chatbots. Chatbots have the tendency to be in work mode without any
friction, making them a fantastic choice for enterprises looking to serve their
customers day & night.

For the e-commerce companies,
chatbot has emerged as the ‘Hero’ because of its ability to remember the
purchase history and customer preferences. Chatbots recall these details in microseconds
and offer extremely relevant suggestions to the users on the website. This means
that without repeating the same information again & again, customers will
get products according totheir preferences. As a business,
this is probably the best service experience to offer to customers. Better
response rate, round-the-clock assistance, and enhanced service standards are the
factors that bolster the case of chatbots in the customer service sector.

AI: Is it enough?

Customers are vital
for businesses. All the efforts and technologies are evolving just for one
thing; to make the customer experience better. So, it becomes quintessential to
consider what customers want.

As of now, customers are
more inclined to live chat because of the involvement of an actual human. When
the customers get frustrated or agitated, they do not want to interact with a
bot that only offers limited responses and scripted replies. Instead, customers
expect an empathetic behavior from the customer service of an organization.

Artificial
intelligence allows machines to learn from past experiences, adapt to modifications
and perform tasks that a human does. But when a customer comes up with an issue
that is more complex and requires emotional intelligence, AI fails miserably. The
fact that AI is still a few miles away from understanding the true nature of
human emotions tips the scales towards live chat, at this moment.

Still, Artificial
Intelligence and apps based on it, like chatbots, are not just offering responsive
and above-par experiences but are also offering a cost-effective benefits to
the businesses that seek a consistent and never-ending support system for their
customers.

Chatbots are promising
but the inability to read between the lines and create an emotional level
connect always puts humans as the biggest rival vis-à-vis AI when it comes to
delivering prodigious customer service.